plainpainter

Rick, I don't know if you have ever run into this phenomena. But I have a friend that had this account. He would paint their outside - do the insides, he charged well - but did great work. And he did stuff like you are doing - gave them work for free to value him as a customer. I remember he took a piece of furniture and stripped it, sanded it, applied stain - took him like 3 days - and did it for free! I mean he was getting plenty of work from these people, so he was getting paid for lots of stuff. But another time - he blueboarded one of those closets that run along the eaves of a house - the kind you can enter in one room and reappear in another room. So he paid me to veneer plaster it - a $2,000 job - and charged them like $500 - again a freebie because they gave him so much work. Come time to repaint his house several years later - the guy bitches every way from shanghai about price. A guy who formally paid my friend without questions - and a guy my friend did lots of free work - suddenly years later becomes stingy, and totally has forgotten all the work my friend gave him gratuitiously. I think customers have a tendency to forgot lots of stuff you do for them and renormalize in their minds. They become accustomed to the fact you are doing them favors and start forgetting they are indeed just that, favors. -Dan

Ken - I know you love rubbing it in. About the Thompson's water seal. I am just trying to think of a strategy to get a deck job to last longer. When I stain a deck - I use a sealant that contains tung oil resins along with linseed oil resins, fungicides, trans-oxide pigments, and wax. As we all know the wax component is the first to disappear on decks. So why not use a product whose sole ingredient is wax on a deck prior to the winter. Don't you think that after staining a deck in may - come November the water beading tendency has disappeared. It was my thought - heck why just splash a coating of Thompson's water seal prior to the winter coming in - as a way to resist the winter snow harming the finish. Any thoughts? You know - a quick pressure wash and rinse - and a coat of wax over a deck that was sealed 6 months prior - could protect the sealer better prior to the winter storms. -Dan

Well - how are you going to procure a water source for such a long fence? I can pressure wash a house and never worry about hose length. What happens to the water supply when you have to stretch hoses a 1/4 mile up a small grade? Assuming everything will go alright and you got nothing better to do - sure $1/sqft is ok. But do you really want to risk it? -Dan

Man - that fence isn't as bad as picket fences, but still would scare me. You'll be there for like 2 months pressure washing, scraping, priming, painting. I'd take the price of $6287 which is $1/sqft and double it. that comes out to $12574. I can get money like that for pressure washing scraping and painting a nice size house. Which is alot more fun. -Dan

I read a story in my newspaper about a tree called the American Chestnut tree. I had never heard about it before - apparently there were over 8 billion specimens all up and down the eastern seaboard - until a blight killed them back. Supposedly the area of forest they covered back around 1900 was somewhere in the range of 30%-40% of the eastern seaboard into the appalachians - there nuts were so sought after, that it was a cottage industry in the appalachians to harvest them and send freight cars full of them each christmas around the country to places like New York, Chicago, Boston, L.A. And they were what all street poles were made of, and most of them today are still in use. There was no need for any preservatives like creosote, the wood was hard like stone, and naturally UV - resistant. The tree is so sorely missed - I knew nothing about this - that the Utilities in the last 40 - 50 years have constantly tried to fund programs to make a resistant species come back - but the chinese chestnut lacks the super straight tall trunks. I read this, and went to go see the last known American Chestnut tree in my town. And it had a sign on it, describing the tree - the name in latin - and it was put there by the utilities. Truly an extremely missed tree and important part of our ecology and economy that is all but gone. And not to mention - a potentially superior hardwood for decking. We still have poles well over a hundred years old that are still in use! And no chemical was ever applied or injected into the wood. There is a light at the end of this tunnel. Apparently through our modern understanding of genetics - we are now able to crossbreed the chinese chestnut with our own chestnut - and only extract the needed resistance of the chinese chestnut has, and yet maintain all the other original characteristics that fool even the experts. Apparently once they mate the two trees - the chinese characteristics are more prominent, i.e. loss of nice straight trunk. So once they have a generation of 50%/50% hybrids - they expose them to the blight. And keep the remainders that are still alive - which is quite low. Then they take this new hybrid species and back breed it with another doner of the original American chestnut. So this new species is now 75% american 25% chestnut, and again they expose it to the blight - and keep the remainders. They do this over and over again - until they have a tree that is 15/16ths American, and only 1/16 chinese with the needed gene that makes them resistant to the blight. They have these trees growing right now on Smolak Farms in North Andover Massachusetts. And I can't wait to grow this tree - and look forward to reinvigorating our forests with a native species that use to provide so much in terms of economy for country and natural food for our ecology. -Dan

Ken - you think $0.85/sq.ft. is out of line to pressure wash and scrape? I just realized something - I don't think there is any money in fence work! Bottom line to do it right I think I'd want $125/link to pressure wash, scrape, and spray two wet coats of solid oil stain. That would be $38,125!!!!!! LOL. I think I'd save my self the embarassment and not return the phone call. I did this exact work to my sister's badly peeling picket fence - applied bleach/TSP, scrubbed, pressure washed the p-diddly out of it, then scraped with carbide/tungsten bahco scapers, and 2 coats of Cabot's O.V.T solid oil stain. And I swear to god, If I can't get $125/section to do that kind of work, I don't think I would get out of bed - I doubt I was even making $35/hr after materials. I know to homeowners $35/hr sounds great for a laborer - but I am running a legit company with overhead, truck repairs, equipment overhead, storage, materials, health insurance, workman's comp, liability, lost time with idiot customers, etc, etc, etc. I think my true wage would be more like $15 out of that $35/hour wage - oh well, customers can't seem to understand in what it takes behind the scenes to run a company or they don't care. To sum it up - and this may sound defeatist - but I'd save my time and energy to bid other jobs that have a higher probability of getting accepted. If I remember correctly when I was doing that fence, it wasn't much fun, it was back-breaking, tedious, and boring - and the icing is knowing the customer thinks you are overcharging them, making you feel really loved. -Dan

Only 6.8 feet per section? Seems small - might be right. I am assuming 2074 represents length of fence, not including both sides. Also assuming fence is 6 feet tall. I'd ask for $0.85/sq.ft to pressure wash and scrape. Or $21,155! LOL - that seems like a lot of money - but then again both sides of the fence measures 8/10ths of a mile long! -Dan

I hear everyone in the industry talking about mill glaze - but the only time I have ever seen mill glaze was when I cut my own wood with a deathly dull blade on my circular saw. Never seen it on lumber yard products - maybe occasionally on the end cuts of pressure treated - but that's it. Anyways why won't people touch this job? Is the thinking that the homeowners think there is only $5 of work to be done, i.e. pita customer? -Dan

I'm a painter - so I typically scrub every sq. inch of house when I pressure wash. That's just how I was taught to do things. But 90% of the time I am getting a house ready to paint - so I need to degloss the old paint with lots of scrubbing + TSP + bleach + high pressure to knock as much paint as possible so as to reduce scraping. I am new to maintenance cleanings - whole new ball game. I am charging about $500 - $600 to do a 2000 sq. ft. home. And yes we get up on ladders, climb around roofs - the whole nine yards. -Dan

btw - I didn't strip the deck. It was just a pressure wash cleaning, and staining. Is that still worth $1500? -Dan

Ken - these people have a summer home in hawaii, 2 on martha's vineyard, on the maine coast. And when I offered to do it for $900 - they bitched and bitched and bitched. I needed the money and told I'd do it for the original rate I did 2 years ago for. They told me about their unexpected expenses. I felt 900 was too cheap - alas, that's what it is like working for the rich sometimes - they don't get rich by spending. -Dan

The problem with Cabot's like many good companies - is that they have been bought out by a parent company - in this case Valspar. It always seems to be the kiss of death. Look at what Sherwin Williams did to products like Minwax, or what they're doing to purdy brush - at least pratt&Lambert is still excellent paint. That and the pressures of the EPA to make VOC compliant coatings at any cost. Since they aren't seeing any improvements in air quality in the state of California - they keep mandating lowered VOC's in hopes of finding improved air quality - but that ain't ever going to happen. Since oil based paints don't pollute! VOC's when combined with nitrous oxides is what forms ground level smog, a.k.a ozone. But nitrous oxides come from cars - and an acre of certain hardwoods of trees release enough isoprenes in an hour on a hot summer day that would be equivalent to dumping 20 gallons of gasoline every hour. So what the heck is the EPA going after oil based paints and coatings for? You have to go after the source, CARS!!!!! There will always be plenty of VOC's coming from trees naturally to mix with car emissions. Heck, Cow flatulence totals more VOC's than all the gasoline vapors escaping from gas stations and cars combined. Or oil based coatings for that matter. -Dan

What is the formula for your own stripper? -Dan

4 hrs. ain't long -Dan

didn't know you could get wood so clean with just water w/o tearing it apart - must be real strong wood -Dan P.S. any Hyacinth Bucket type customers yet? LOL!

Actually with a machine that big - stick with the 40 tip, or maybe try a 25. TSP is basically a fertilizer as far as the plants are concerned. I always tend to pressure wash on rainy days - so I hit areas with bleach, lye, tsp - it doesn't matter, never had any plants dying on me. -Dan

I wish I knew. The last deck I charged was $1.5/sq.ft of deck area to pressure wash and stain. And I feel it wasn't enough - mind you I am not counting all the area of balusters and the two stairways. Just taking a simple gross area of the floor, and I got $750 for a 500 sq.ft. deck with balusters and 2 stairways included. It took me and a helper 6 hours each or 12 total man hours just to stain the whole thing - which I figure to be a minimum of $480 for labor, plus 4 gallons of stain $100, plus the labor to pressure wash $160. Which totals $740 - but this doesn't include time to bullshit with customers, travel time, heck how about some profits on top of that to help out with the losing jobs, etc. -Dan -Dan

I am a painter. First and foremost, when you pressure wash - this isn't the typical cleaning the house routine. That's fine for people that want their house cleaned on a yearly basis - which is most of the work out there. For paint prep - you want to use that pressure washer to lift paint off the side of the house, this means 15 degree tip - lots of pressure! Seriously painters are useing the pressure washer as a means to reduce actual scraping. You'll also want to use a different soap mix - most guys here use a mix to kill mildew with bleach and detergents to clean the house. For paint prep - you'll want to degloss the existing paint to give it a 'profile' for the new paint to cling to - this means TSP! and loads of it - so TSP/bleach - and high pressure to knock off the loose paint. Either using an extension pole to get up to high places - or just climbing ladders like we painters do - we have to climb ladders all the times anyway - so it's no big deal to pressure wash off ladders for us. -Dan

Rod - after reading your post, it just makes me more convinced of all the variables that make a deck stain fail. So my question is what exactly would warranteeing workmanship mean? I just did a customer deck, it has full sun all day long, looking in the southernly direction up against a white house. And after 2 years - this deck was beat bad! Now if I warranteed for a period of 2 years - what would that mean. would I be re-doing their deck for free? It just is what it is. They didn't want to strip - so I cleaned, pressure washed, sanded some hand rails and some deck boards down - and re-applied stain. The upshot - is that I did sell them on a fall maintenance plan - whereby I will clean the deck, and put some clear finish like thompson's water seal - just to give it a wax protection for the winter snow.

Personally - I'd tell 'em to go get their $45/section of fence. I don't care. Just because something isn't seen as cost effective - isn't a good reason to do something dirt cheap- computer stores give away printers whey they sell computers - because they make all their money on ink cartridges. You can buy a printer for $40 sometimes - yet pay that same amount on ink that will last only a couple of months. Same thing with the fence - they can get a new fence for cheap, but if it doesn't get protected it will get old and moldy quick. So unless they pay good money to get it pressure washed and sealed - it's always goin to get ugly. Perception of value changes with time. It use to be when I was kid, everyone did their own yardwork, or hired kids to mow grass and rake up leaves. Now professional landscaping crews take care of at least 40% of the yards in town - money they wouldn't have spent 20 years ago, they gladly spend today. -Dan -Dan

Oh god, customers and colors. I paint houses as well pressure washing and sealing decks. This one lady had a hard time picking colors - so I though I would make it easy for her. I installed a benjamin moore color program on her computer with a picture of her house. It took her months and months to decide. Then came time to paint - I had the oil based house primer tinted to the color she wanted, when it went on the house - she didn't like the color. That's ok I told her - this is just the primer, so she picked another shade. Well 3 different colored primers went on the house. And when that was done, she got 8 different quarts of paint - before I could start putting on the latex house paint. with decks - unless they ask, I just assume natural tone. -Dan

Sounds kind of cheap to me - My sister had a badly peeling painted fence. I removed each section, pressure washed them, then scraped them - sprayed on 3 coats of oil solid stain, two of the coats were applied wet. And even belt sanded the posts and gave them a couple of coats - I wanted $125/section to do that work. Granted this isn't the same kind of work but 42 sections would run $5250. -Dan

I bought a moisture meter - and it hasn't told me anything I don't already know. If the wood looks dry, and feels dry, it probably is dry. I have one where you stick two prongs into the wood - and it has only registered moisture when in fact the wood seemed moist. Is there really a use for these tools? Am I missing something? -Dan

why are you going out of business? -Dan

The problem I am seeing, is the definition of failure, it seems to me everytime I make up a definition in a contract and leave the meaning vague - the customer will use that against me to the umpteenth degree. For example, I was painting this house - and everything was going wrong on the job, my profits went up in smoke but I persisted. When came time to collect the next check - since the contract said 2nd check will be collected when paint is half done. The customer looked at me and looked at the house and said - "I don't think the paint job is half done" and then went back inside. Well I was all done and packed my stuff and left. I think with decks - there is so much abuse that can't be predicted. If a deck was used for a few weeks during summer and then left alone afterwards - it may last 24 months according to our definition. Or there could be pets, barbecues every other day, and kids splashing chlorinated water onto the deck boards. You get my point. I think offering warrantees is a big mistake. Either people think you do a great job and ask you to come back to redo their decks - or they think you are an idiot, how is a warrantee to going persuade them otherwise? -Dan